


The Line Between

by grim_lupine



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Sharing Clothing, Sibling Incest, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-11
Updated: 2011-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cameron has a jacket that fits him like a glove, all sleek fabric pulled tight against his shoulders, buttoning him into the model of a proper, young Harvard student.</p><p>Tyler slides himself into that jacket as if it were made for him. There’s not a stitch of difference--it holds him in close, a sartorial embrace, and he looks in the mirror and he sees--</p><p>He doesn’t know what he sees. <i>Who</i> he sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Line Between

-

\--

Cameron has a jacket that fits him like a glove, all sleek fabric pulled tight against his shoulders, buttoning him into the model of a proper, young Harvard student.

Tyler slides himself into that jacket as if it were made for him. There’s not a stitch of difference—it holds him in close, a sartorial embrace, and he looks in the mirror and he sees—

He doesn’t know what he sees. _Who_ he sees.

Even the smell wafting up from the collar is familiar and confusing—the skin-cologne-sweat scent of his own body, of his brother’s when they stand too close, of _them_.

Two fingers dip beneath Cameron’s— _Tyler’s_ —collar, linger warm against his throat. Tyler doesn’t know when he closed his eyes, but he doesn’t open them now, even when he feels heat pressed against his back, exhalation damp behind his ear, a voice that breathes quietly, “That’s mine.”

He might mean the jacket. He might not.

“Is it?” Tyler whispers back, presses back, tips his head back onto a strong shoulder and bares his throat.

 _they even sound the same—_

The lines are blurring and Tyler can’t bring himself to care.

*

When they were younger, sometimes they would switch places and see who would notice first.

No one ever did. They knew each other too well, Tyler tamping down his wild mischief to mimic Cameron’s quieter self-poise, Cameron letting himself go loud, careless, like he won’t let himself do except when he’s not _being_ himself. It’s all right when it’s Tyler. (It’s all right when _he’s_ Tyler.)

Sometimes they would spend a whole day like that, sometimes two. Once when they were fifteen they tried for a whole week. They learned how to answer to each other’s names, stop twitching when someone said the wrong one; Cameron walked with Tyler’s too-big-for-this-world swagger, and Tyler slicked himself down, kept his trouble bubbling underneath the surface.

After a while, hearing _Tyler_ or _Cameron_ both sounded right, multiple choice with two correct answers, and it got just a little harder to remember—

Cameron whispered one night in the silence of their bedroom, across the gulf-wide distance between their beds, “Night, Ca—”

They froze in unison. Cameron felt his pulse pounding in his ears and he knew, he _knew_ , that Tyler was the same (of course he was); there was a feeling in him like maybe he was going to throw up, and maybe he was going to have a heart attack, and maybe he wanted to bury his head in his pillow and jerk himself off until this slick, sick, scary feeling went away.

Tyler gasped out, shaky and quiet (Cameron heard it in his bones), and turned to face his wall. Cameron stared at the line of his back until the pounding in his chest slowed down.

They switched back the next day, but the damage had already been done.

*

Fast forward, and they’re both in the middle of this game that neither of them know the rules to, but both of them want to win (what constitutes winning is unclear, but losing has never been an option for either of them). They don’t talk about it, they don’t tell anyone else, but they both know: they’re working their way up to some thunderstorm, earth-shattering climax that will change them forever, and they’re both absolutely powerless to stop it.

Cameron goes out one night and meets a girl; she’s sweet, sexy, she likes him. She gives him her number and tells him he’s going to take her out the next night.

Cameron gets back to his room and feels Tyler’s eyes on him before he even switches on the light.

“Did you fuck her?” Tyler asks caustically, smirking, eyes sharp and knowing; he’s crude on purpose, because Cameron hates it ( _only the truth they both know is that Cameron feels he_ should _hate it, but it makes him shudder helplessly instead to hear everything he thinks but never lets himself say_ ). Cameron swallows.

“We’re going out tomorrow night,” he says, and Tyler gets to his feet in a quick, powerful motion, crowds Cameron against the wall until their chests are brushing, mouths scant inches apart.

“Yes, we are,” he says with a sharp smile of nothing like amusement; takes Cameron’s phone and slides his own into Cameron’s pocket, fingers pressing at his hip through denim that might as well be tissue-paper for how little it holds back the heat of his touch.

Cameron has opportunity after opportunity to say ‘no’; but he won’t. Tyler knows it. They both do. Saying ‘no’ would be to end this game forever, and they’re both in too far for that.

So the next night it’s Tyler who goes out, with his hair combed neat and Cameron’s favorite shirt on, and it’s Cameron who waits, clock-watching with his heart drumming furiously. It’s Tyler who comes back, loose-limbed and wet-mouthed, smelling like sex and looking smug, dangerous, and breathlessly expectant; Tyler who says, smirking, “Don’t worry, I was a perfect gentleman.”

And he was, Cameron knows it, like he was there himself watching. Tyler held back, said empty, nice things about the girl’s dress or her hair, charmed her effortlessly at dinner, went back to hers while somehow managing to look like he expected nothing at all, like he’d be perfectly happy with a kiss at the doorstep and a sweet goodnight.

Cameron’s shirt is undone at Tyler’s throat. There’s a vivid smudge of red at the base of it, the press of a mouth leaving behind its mark; Cameron sees it, hears it, feels it driving him insane—knows how it happened, Tyler kissing the girl slow and sweet and fucking _gentlemanly_ , silver-tongue charming his way past the buttons of her shirt and up the slow skin-drag of her thigh under her skirt. She bit him with everything she couldn’t hold back, all her coyness dissipated in the wind, and moaned “ _Cameron_ ,” and Tyler—

Tyler’s mouth is slack, eyes so dark he looks otherworldly. He’s watching Cameron like he knows every last thought running through his mind, just waiting for this moment to break, waiting for _Cameron_ to break.

Cameron will not break first.

He steps close, close enough he can smell the girl’s perfume and his brother’s skin, close enough that Tyler’s eyes slide half-lidded, involuntarily.

“Go to bed,” Cameron says quietly. “You’re drunk.”

Tyler’s jaw clenches, a slight ripple of muscle. Neither one of them moves. “Yeah,” Tyler says finally, mouth twisted, eyes hard. “I guess I am.”

It isn’t until he’s moved away that Cameron finds himself able to breathe properly, covers his face with a minutely shaking hand. He can’t tell if he’s won or if he’s lost.

He lies awake that night thinking of his brother’s hands on a girl’s warm body, his own hands, _their_ hands, and by the time sleep grabs him, the difference is unimportant, indeterminate, nonexistent.

*

Before they know it, a month has gone by of them playing with fire; of Cameron answering when someone calls for Tyler, of Tyler taking out Cameron’s dates, of confusing professors and friends alike, of waking up mornings with the split-second uncertainty of whose skin they’re living inside at the moment.

It isn’t all the time, and that’s worse—if this were a game, a joke, they would be constantly aware of the reverse they were pulling, of the demarcation between Cameron and Tyler that is steadily wiping itself out. Instead, they slide into it, without thought, until Cameron looks at his schedule and can’t remember which classes he went to as Cameron, and which as Tyler; until Tyler reaches for Cameron’s shirts and doesn’t realize what he has done until the fabric is settling around his skin, so familiar it scares him a little.

They finally splinter the air and their last traces of denial with a kiss that’s half-anger, half-relief, shoving each other down onto a bed, biting and scratching and trying to draw blood, to erase this skin that’s the last barrier between them becoming something frightening and perfect; two displaced halves fusing into a whole.

Tyler gasps and Cameron’s mouth opens in an echo—

and Cameron whispers a name that neither of them can hear properly, but it sounds like—

and they bite the same, same-sized sets of teeth, tongue and lips drawing the same rich blood to the surface—

and and and—

“We have to _stop_ this,” one of them whispers, agonized, drowning, and the other one (or maybe the same) says with a choked, desperate laugh, “I don’t think we can, anymore. I don’t think we can.”

\--

-


End file.
